Noughts and Crosses
by Twinings
Summary: All work and no play makes Jonathan Crane a dull boy...so let the games begin. [CAT]


Disclaimer: I do not own the Scarecrow or any DC characters. Believe me, when I own them, you'll know.

This is part of a series. You should start at the beginning if you know what's good for you. Although if a lengthy fic seems daunting, "Posterity" will serve as an acceptable substitute for an introduction. View the timeline at: www. freewebs. com/ bitemetechie/ catverse. html (sans spaces.) When the site is updated to include this story, you'll see that it comes after "Hurty McHurt-Hurt."

Enjoy!

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Noughts and Crosses

Jonathan Crane was a solitary man by nature. If he could have, he would have spent every waking moment down in his lab, running experiments and taking meticulous notes that would have made him a god in the scientific community, if he had ever actually published them.

Unfortunately, the demands of reality occasionally interfered with his work. And since taking on Techie, Al, and the Captain as his goon squad, his alone time had been cut down to almost nothing.

Why the girls were so attached to their "Master Squish" was a mystery to him. Why he tolerated them and the changes they had brought to his life was an even bigger mystery, one that he had not been able to solve no matter how he looked at the problem.

Working with them wasn't so bad. Time and again, they had proven themselves both willing and able to follow his orders, frequently exceeding his expectations, sometimes exceeding even his assessment of their capabilities. They never demanded praise, even on those rare occasions when he was impressed enough to consider offering it. They made the job their priority, and they were better at what they did than he ever could have hoped.

So, yes, working with them was fine.

_Living_ with them was another matter altogether.

During a heist, they were consummate professionals—perhaps a bit overexcited about their jobs, but professionals nonetheless.

When they got back to the lair, everything changed. They became clingy, smothering, and as often as not they circumvented his orders, if they didn't ignore them altogether. They followed him around. They _touched_ him. They shattered his concentration with their constant, overwhelming insistence that he "take better care of himself," as if his physical wellbeing had any importance compared to his work.

Even on days like today, when he had managed to impress on them his desire for absolute privacy, they still managed to intrude.

Both Al and Techie had recently celebrated their twenty-sixth birthdays. He hadn't been told—and wouldn't have cared if he had been—but he had certainly noticed when the baby grand piano had just…_appeared_ next to the television one morning before he woke up.

At least Techie's new computer was _quiet_. Whoever had decided to give Al yet _another_ way to annoy him was due for a stern talking-to.

He could hear her now, hammering out a jaunty little tune while the other two seemed to be trying to rattle the building's foundations.

He couldn't take another minute of that rhythmic thumping, or the answering pounding in his head. He was going to have to kill them.

He marked his place in his notes, carefully stowed what was left of the fear toxin in the proper container, dragged his test subject back to the holding cell, and turned to survey his rack of torture instruments. Which would be best for scaring them silly? A difficult choice. The first time they had seen his lab, they had all made a beeline for that wall, squealing with joy as if the Judas Cradle had brought up some very fond childhood memories.

That had disturbed him, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it.

There was a particularly loud crash from upstairs. He winced, imagining the splintering of the furniture. What were they doing up there?

If he had a gun, he would have just shot them. But it wasn't sound planning to keep firearms in close proximity to the captives, and going all the way to his room would take too long.

A closer inspection of his tools revealed the rather embarrassing fact that all of his most-used torture devices had been gifts from the girls.

Well, they did know tools and weapons better than anyone else he'd ever met. They'd even given him a thing or two that _he_ hadn't recognized.

Maybe he wouldn't kill them, after all…

He eyed the golf clubs speculatively…So simple, and yet so versatile, and with a nice, solid weight…It was tempting…

But, no. They had to live until at least the end of the week. He had another job for them, and it wouldn't be at all easy for him to pull it off by himself.

Halfway up the stairs, it occurred to him that facing them unarmed wasn't the wisest idea, even if they were in a good mood. There was no telling what the girls would try to do to him. Nothing malicious, he knew that much, but in the past they had done everything from begging him for dancing lessons to pulling down his pants. (Damn Al and her wretched idea of fun.)

They seemed to be in a particularly rambunctious mood, but he thought he could handle them. He still had a method or two of keeping them in line, even if they had somehow convinced themselves that he was their personal walking teddy bear.

He could hear Techie calling out commands as he neared the door.

"Step, step, turn, duck. _Duck_, Captain, if you don't want to get your brains bashed in!"

He smiled at that. Whatever they were up to sounded as if it might prove entertaining.

He made sure to wipe the smile off his face before he actually opened the door.

Dear God. The Captain was coming right for him.

He flinched, envisioning what would happen when she collided with him and they both went tumbling down the stairs. By the horrified look on her face, she must be seeing the same mental image he was, of the two of them lying at the bottom of the stairs, unconscious, broken limbs intertwined. And with Al and Techie eager to nurse them back to health…

She skidded to a stop, just barely missing him by slamming into the doorframe instead. The piano went silent, and Techie started laughing as if this were the funniest thing she had ever seen.

He didn't bother asking them what was going on. He could see that the TV had been playing _Singin' in the Rain_ (again) and had been paused with Al's favorite character frozen in the act of running up a wall. Beyond what he could logically infer from that, he didn't think he wanted to know.

"Are you aware of how much noise you're making?" he demanded instead. They all looked guilty.

"Were we disturbing you?" asked Al. He glared at her. "Sorry, squish face. I'll play quietly." He walked up behind her and slammed the lid down over the keys, narrowly missing her fingers.

"No, you won't. You'll find something else to do, or you'll get out and leave me in peace." Looking very subdued, Techie reached for the remote. "_Not_ that. This movie is obviously a bad influence on you. If I hear one more peep, I'm taking the TV. Understand?"

"Yes, Squishykins."

"Good. And don't call me Squishykins," he added, almost as an afterthought. He passed the Captain on his way back to the basement door, and noticed that she was looking a little stunned from her recent encounter with the wall. "How often have you lamented your inability to do a simple cartwheel?" She looked sheepish. "Leave the backflips to those better equipped to perform them."

He slammed the door behind him, leaving three chastened henchgirls in his wake. Things would be quiet for a while, at least, and by the time they worked their way back up to that particular level of destructive glee, maybe his headache would be gone. Or he would have made enough toxin to turn all their noise into something a little more soothing to his ears. Either one would satisfy him, really.

Everything was absolutely silent for the first few minutes. He could almost believe they had actually left him alone. Of course, eventually he heard the soft murmur of their voices from above, but it was nothing he couldn't tune out, soothed as he was by the repetitive, zenlike act of creating his toxin. He was tweaking an old formula, but he hadn't changed it so much that there would be any real thought involved, only the old, familiar motions. Eventually, he came close to actually relaxing, and began to seriously contemplate _willingly_ joining them for dinner.

About that time, their voices changed, raised in sudden cries of alarm. Jonathan looked up, startled, but of course the ceiling couldn't give him the first clue as to what was wrong.

Straining his ears, he caught the word, "Bat!" among their frantic babbling.

_Batman? Here?_

That wasn't a good sign. He slipped the mask down over his face.

The only way out of the lab was up the stairs, through the room where the girls had been surprised by the enemy. Like it or not, he was going to have to join them. Because if Batman beat them, _he_ was next, and he would very much prefer to be someplace with a clear path between him and the exit.

He snatched up an adequate supply of toxin—"adequate" being enough to down Santa Claus—and walked toward the stairs. He took his time, because he knew how much the girls enjoyed a good fight—almost as much as they enjoyed fussing over his injuries on the rare occasion that something got past them to hurt him. He wasn't looking forward to the nursing any more than to getting hurt in the first place, so he gave them some time to finish the fight on their own.

Before he even reached the bottom step, he had reason to wish he had thought to run.

"Help me," the Captain cried urgently, her voice coming clear even through the walls and distance between them. "Oh, my _god_! _Help me_!" There was a pained shriek, followed by a heavy thud. He hesitated. This didn't sound promising.

"She's _dead_," Al's voice rang out. "Techie, _run_!"

"I can't! I—fuck!"

Jonathan snatched up one of the golf clubs, the tools nearest at hand, and dashed up the stairs. Toxin or not, there was something about a weapon with a solid weight to it to give a man that much more courage. Whatever was up there, he wasn't going to let it catch him down in the basement with no way out.

(He tried not to see himself as a knight rushing to the rescue of his ladies. That was a role for which he had never been suited, and those girls were no ladies. He tried just as hard not to imagine the dragon they were fighting. It couldn't be Batman—Batman didn't kill. And he didn't hear the echo of Al's words, "She's _dead_," or feel the jolt that had shot through him when he'd heard the rather…surprising exclamation. One of _his_ girls? Dead? Impossible. What manner of creature could actually do them any harm?)

"Don't die, don't die, don't die," Al was chanting. "Don't die—shit! No! Get off me, you son of a bitch!"

He flung the door open, toxin at the ready, club held awkwardly out in front of him, scanning the room for the source of danger.

And saw nothing. The girls were all sitting at their computers, relatively calm and all in one piece. And they were all staring at him, wide-eyed, apparently surprised that whatever shenanigans they were engaged in had been interrupted by the Scarecrow in full battle readiness.

His brief flash of relief that there was nothing to fight off was quickly replaced by burning anger.

"What…are…you…doing?" he demanded in a tone so dangerous even they could recognize the gravity of the situation.

"We're just…playing a game," Al said in a small voice. She was looking more than a little pale. "Did you…did you come up here to rescue us?"

His finger tightened on the trigger of the toxin.

"_No_."

"He's pissed," the Captain whispered; evidently, that wasn't intended for his ears. His eyes narrowed. Gas them, or beat them to death with his golf clubs? Decisions, decisions.

"S—Jonathan?" Techie said in a timid voice that didn't fit her at all. "Sorry we scared you. Everything is fine, really. We're fine."

He shifted his focus to her, and was slightly mollified by the way her eyes widened when she met his stare.

"I wasn't worried about _you_," he said venomously. "You were yelling about bats."

"In the game," the Captain started. He glared at the woman, irrationally irritated at her for being alive.

"I don't _care_ about your game. The next time you decide to scream for help like that, I want to come up here to find that at least one of you is on fire, and you've broken the fire extinguisher."

"We don't have a fire extinguisher. We used it on that cop." He smiled involuntarily, but didn't let a hint of humor creep into his voice.

"Then you'll just have to try not to set yourselves on fire, won't you?"

Al grinned.

"I'll stay out of the kitchen." That was a bit more flippant than he would have preferred, but he let it go. A few moments of genuine fear was the best he was going to get out of them. They just didn't have the common sense to be properly frightened of him.

He grunted at her and turned to leave. However, she seemed to think she wasn't done with him yet.

"Do you want to play with us, Squishykins?" He gave her an eloquent _look_, then realized she couldn't see it through the mask.

"No," he said sharply. "I do not want to play with you. I would rather play Tic-Tac-Toe against a trained chicken. I would rather play bridge with Batman as my partner. I would rather rip off my own arm and play ping pong against _myself_ than join in whatever foolishness has you three squealing like idiots."

"But you could meet my brother," Al said innocently.

She had a brother? That was news to him.

"Believe me, I have no desire to meet anyone who shares so much as a single chromosome with you."

"But you could be a gnome," said the Captain. "Gnomes are the most intelligent. Ops is a gnome. They even have the same accent."

"Says you," Techie retorted. "Squishy, listen to this and tell me if you think it sounds _anything_ like me." She typed something, and her computer spoke up, echoed by the other two, in a squeaky female voice with a clear Midwestern accent.

"I apologize profusely for any inconvenience my murderous rampage may have caused."

Al and the Captain burst out laughing. Even Jonathan had to smile.

"Okay, bad example," said Techie. "But you can't honestly say I've ever been that perky." She looked as if she were daring him to disagree. He shrugged indifferently.

"_Play_ with us, Squishy," Al insisted.

"No."

"How about ping-pong?" the Captain suggested.

Without another word, he left.

_I should have just gassed them,_ he thought as he replaced the toxin among the other supplies in his lab. _I_ should_ have been rid of them when I had the chance._ He pulled off his mask and ran his fingers through his hair, straightening his glasses with his other hand as he did so. It was amazing what a sweat he had worked up in the few short minutes he had worn the mask.

Not that he had been afraid for them. The only reason he had to sweat was that his own breathing made the inside of the mask uncomfortably hot.

He tossed the thing aside as distastefully as if _it_ were the cause of his annoyance.

_Why_ were they so damned…friendly? They could take a perfectly—well, he hated to use the word _innocent_ in regard to himself, but they could take a perfectly _neutral_ act on his part, and attribute motives that had no basis in reality. It wasn't enough that they were attached to him; they had to make _him_ fond of _them_, too, if only in their own minds.

Were they never going to learn? He didn't love them. He didn't even like them. How many times was he going to have to say it? How many ways _could_ he say it?

He glared at the work they had interrupted. They were just lucky it hadn't been anything important. How dared they make him—

_No. Don't even think that word._

Worry.

No! He had not been worried about them. Merely concerned—no, _surprised_—

Damn it.

He stomped back up the stairs, half hoping the wood would splinter under his feet and save him from having to do this.

He threw the door open, and was greeted by three startled faces. They looked guilty, no doubt wondering what else they had done. He glared at them all.

"Next time you're dying, keep it to yourselves."

They all grinned.

"We love you, too! Now, get in here and play with us. We need a backup healer."

"Why should I?"

"You'll never have to hear us scream, 'Al's dead, run for your life!'—unless you're the one who gets us killed."

They really should have been salesmen.

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_Author's note: Thanks for reading! Next in the series is "Victory." But since that doesn't exist yet, "Make-Out Point" by BiteMeTechie. Read it and love it!_


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